Sleep is a state as mysterious as it is crucial to survival, to life. And when something so imperative to basic health and functioning becomes elusive, or at times disappears altogether for several days on end, it no longer seems like some magical, whimsical wonderland of dreams and gentle rest. Its mystery can no longer be romanticized. It must be solved, and quickly. Because living with little to no sleep is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. Your faculties don't just become sluggish. Your body doesn't just feel exhausted. These things happen, but something diametrically opposed to these things happens at the very same time. Your brain becomes a jumble of fried, anxious synapses, leaping from haggard hopelessness to the highest peak of terror--on par with being lunged at by a grizzly bear, every 90 seconds or so. And while you lumber and scramble through your days, alternating between the pendulum of dead-tired and adrenaline-surging panic, each night ahead looms like your worst nightmare--only you'd gladly tackle your worst nightmare if you could only do so while ensconced in glorious, restorative sleep. Nightmares--real ones--are a piece of cake, an absolute dream!--compared to the death march of unending wakefulness.
And of course you'll have sought out every possible idea and treatment for this--as your doctors will minimize-- "very common problem." You will have started with good old melatonin, 5 mgs at first, jumping to 10mg a month later, and then to 15mg. You will reluctantly see your doctor for an ambien prescription to help get your sleep back on track, and then to use very occasionally, on particularly bad nights. But the nights are consistently bad and you begin to rely on the pills. A couple of months later the pills stop working and you decide to stop taking them and force natural sleep to resume, as if the initial problem was a pill addiction and not mind-deadening insomnia. To avoid withdrawal symptoms you taper down to half doses for a week before stopping completely. Sleep is non-existent or dodgey at best during this time. Often you won't fall asleep before 4 or 5 a.m. and when Casper rouses you at 6 in the morning it is all you can do to not sob torrentially in front of him. But you bring him downstairs and make him breakfast and stare vacantly at the face of this boy you love more than life itself, but who you cannot imagine caring for today, much less for many years, day in and day out, if this situation doesn't right itself.
You'll try every sleep aid and supplement and tea on the market. You'll try acupuncture, hypnosis, reiki, and meditation. You'll tackle things from a western medicine front at the same time. You'll see a sleep specialist and go for a sleep study, which will yield nothing helpful, only that you have a difficult time reaching and maintaining REM sleep. No solutions are offered. You will get autonomic nervous system testing, which will come back more or less normal. You will have a cardiologist order a 48 hour holter monitor which will record a smattering of palpitations, but nothing the doctor is too concerned about. You will call your fiancé, who works third shift driving a semi, at 3:00 in the morning, weeping, and he'll tell you to try to relax and that you can sleep when he gets home to watch your son. He will encourage you to nap with him and with Casper, but you've tried this and your brain isn't capable of sleeping at any time. There's no pulling a fast one on it and grabbing an hour during the day. Your brain is on to you and it's having none of your desperate attempts at sleep, day or night. Your terror and paranoia begin to mount due to months of sleep deprivation until you're quite certain you will kill yourself. It seems the only viable option to this unrelenting horror show your life had become. It takes all your strength to admit yourself to the in-patient psych ward, as one miniscule scrap of functioning brain matter convinces you that there might be help out there and that your family might miss you a great deal, should you off yourself. The experience in-patient will prove to be the exact opposite of helpful; it is in fact quite damaging. You'll be put on medication that will still not help you sleep, but only trudge in a drug addled stupor through the sad halls with the other sad, drugged people. You will cry for the majority of the time you're there--for yourself and for your son who must miss you a great deal and for the worry you're causing your family and for the sad stories you're forced to hear from the other patients during group therapy. You'll become quite certain that this is the worst, most damaging and counter-productive place for a mentally ill person to be. When you get out 5 days later, you experience equal parts relief and dread, as the original problem has not been solved, only compounded by ineffective, harmful medication. You begin the shaky, gut-wrenchingly anxious process of detoxing yourself from the pointless poisons and try to find new ways to manage lack of sleep.
You will finally wind up at the ER (there've been several stints there in the past 6 months, in the interest of honesty, where you were treated like a nuisance and a 100% pure mental patient), and you convince the doctor to order a CT scan. When it comes back abnormal you will rejoice and mourn in equal measure. There is something wrong. I knew it. Why wouldn't anyone listen to me? Why wouldn't anyone believe me? Why would severe debilitating insomnia and anxiety, not precipitated by any acute trauma, descend upon a person so suddenly and worsen so rapidly?
There are still no answers. I must wait 3 weeks for a neurosurgery consult and 4 weeks to see a neurologist. I'm left with Googled scholarly articles about colloid cysts and way too much medication to induce sleep. But at this point Dion says, "Just drug yourself to sleep until you can see the neurologist." So this once very health-conscious girl who shuddered at consuming a non-organic apple is now knocking back 10 mg of ambien and 1 mg of clonazepam, along with my natural stuff--melatonin, L-theanine, and magnesium--to lure sleep to my buzzing, itching, screaming brain. And I'm awaiting an answer, a plan. I'm praying that brain surgery can give me back my mind, my life. I'm praying for Tracy to come back. Because I was never terribly kind to her. I never really gave her the credit she deserved. But I promise that if the real Tracy gets to return, I'll do everything I can to make sure she knows how great she is, and that she's brave and kind and funny and an all-around good person. This is my promise to me. Come back, Tracy. I miss you.
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